Even More – Ted Prokash

September 1, 2025

From the Desk of Sports & Leisure & Arts & Entertainment

The other day I tweeted out that all Cubs fans should die. And now I fear I’ve lost a friend. It’s okay, I lose all my friends eventually. I’m sure it’s part of God’s plan. Like, it’s not you babe, it’s God.

I think a lot of my problem is I’m just too assertive. Always poised for conflict. Won’t take no for an answer. Always ready to advocate for the little guy. The little guy inside of me. The little boy that lives in my bowels. But then a lot of you probably don’t even remember the Meatmen. You know:

Crippled Children Suck!
it’s easy to see
their parents were dumb
for having VD
and conceiving a baby
as ugly as it
give it leg braces
that don’t even fit
crippled children suck!

Yeah, we’ve gone and tried to scrub the national consciousness of such idiocy. Such filth. Aspersions cast on the poorliest of God’s creatures. Shameful. A girl named Margo on the east side that’ll shit on your face for $20. She’s been preparing herself with herbal laxatives for the better part of a week. We all used to be hooked on moronics. We used to have a good time. But these things are cyclical. States of goon fugue followed by fascist bouts of penance. How can you have Catholic guilt if you never crusade? If you don’t eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?

Cuss words used to be rooted in blasphemy. Bloody hell. Damn body of Christ. Then it was all bodily functions. Fucking cunt. Shit my puking pants. Nowadays the worst swears are all aspersions cast upon others’ identities. And I’m not about to list them. I’m assertive, not a moron.

I had a dream that Kurt Cobain wrote and performed the trumpet line in “The Impression That I Get” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. He wore lederhosen and had spiky orange hair like Jonn Lydon – Public Image Ltd era. It was Kurt’s big break. I know the timing doesn’t line up, but that doesn’t matter. It was fucking hilarious. I constantly impress myself. Recently I had a dream that Jim Morrison had adopted a kind of fascist dictator persona, wearing one of those General’s hats in the studio…his bandmates begged him not to, but he couldn’t be reasoned with. Then Jim was in a taxicab dressed as a woman. He appeared to be going down on someone…another cross-dressing man? Yup, there’s his penis, ripe, tumescent and big as day. At the end, Jim comes up for air with lipstick smeared clownishly across his face and says something hilariously witty. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Anyway, when I dream about Jim Morrison, he always looks like Val Kilmer. Even I am not immune to the worms of popular culture.

I have lucid fantasies sometimes, dumb jokes fleshed out into elaborate bits. Monkeyshines not fit for the family group chat. They’re usually inspired by the songs I hear on the radio at work. “Burnin’ For You” by Blue Öyster Cult always makes me think of a Mel Brooks styled musical comedy set in a Nazi death camp. “Here Comes the Hotstepper” inspires notions of an epic scat-themed rap music video. Miracles of jocularity that will never see the light of day. They won’t give me my own production company. Eddie Money inspires me to nothing, by the way. Eddie Money’s been played out. Spent. I don’t want to let you go ‘till you see the light. I have seen the light.

In a lot of my dreams I’m pedaling some sort of recumbent contraption loaded with all my earthly possessions. Half-functional Peavy amps, totes full of trinkets, mesh sacks filled with laundry lashed together at my back. I’m usually weaving through the streets of some vaguely familiar city, late for an ill-fated gig. Often I’m shunted inexplicably into freeway traffic. Then I’m like an unmotorized road warrior, gripping and weaving and pedaling for my life among the monstrous screaming death machines. I’m sure it’s metaphorical. An analog virus in a digital world. The speed of it all is too much for me.

Ah, but then fuck all this shit about dreams and juvenile jack-off fantasies. Stupid half-cocked tweets. What about our ACTIONS? That’s where it’s at. Don’t tell me who you are, show me.

I was recently asked to star in a Wrangler Jeans commercial alongside Brett Favre and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Don’t be too impressed; it’s just because we all share the same birthday. Anyway, I turned it down. With everything that’s transpired between the old gunslinger and his fans…Brett treating objects like women in his Netflix special, misappropriating state welfare funds…I just couldn’t in good conscience associate. And to think, it wasn’t that long ago we were down at the Bamboo Room on Main Street together doing shots of Wild Turkey up our noses and snorting cocaine off the strippers’ pimply asses. Better hope Deanna don’t find out about this one, Hoss! SSSSNNIFFFFF! Haw haw, fuck that rotten-tittied bitch! She can swaller mah touchdown throwin’ arm if she don’t like it! Haw haw! Sigh. We’ll never see those days again, Hoss…when we walked the earth like kings.

We’re none of us young anymore. We’ve all had our share of concussions. Spent our time beneath the blue medical tent. My best one was from getting punched in the head with a fisted roll of quarters by some punks outside a Nashville Pussy concert. It hurt at the time, but it turned out just fine. I even ended up collaborating musically with several of my assailants. We laughed about it later – or I did. Hey Jared, do you remember the time? That time with the roll of quarters, remember? Kevin Failure running interference, Ted, don’t. DON’T. Ach, and that’s my problem, see? The assertiveness again. Always pushing. Can never leave well enough alone. Like I’m living in some sort of…gangster’s paradise in my mind. But anyway, did YOU get to see Cherokee Parks’ sister standing 6’4’’ in cowboy boots with a tattoo that says “eat me” in the style of the Harley Davidson logo just above her pussy light a bass drum beater dipped in oil for a torch and breath fire over a sweaty sea of tumescent teenage boys? The flame so close and hot it singed our eyebrows? You see, that’s what I mean.

Oh, and then the Brew Crew go on their magical run of 2025. And then the big showdown at Wrigley Field. And maybe things don’t go as the author of your fondest hopes would have had writ. And maybe a street-tough Wisconsin boy gets a little hot under his sweaty blue collar. Just maybe he’s a little beered up at the time. Maybe he spouts off a little on the internet. Maybe he says some things he doesn’t really mean. Or just maybe he harbors a certain violence in his heart, a malignancy of ill-intent the blackness of which isn’t broached in the conversations of Northwestern grads in Pete Crow-Armstrong jerseys in the Wrigleyville bars. And mayhaps demons do walk this earth, not in the bodies of pigs but of men.

The Brewers did end up salvaging the last game of the series. Two out of five ain’t bad. They left Wrigley Field seven games up in the Central Division standings. But hell, I harbor no delusions of hometown glory. Bob Uecker is gone and he’s never coming back. I wasn’t born in 1982. I know a lot of smoke & mirrors when I can’t quite see it.

That night I got into some old favorites from my teenage years, picking records from the dusty bins in the basement. When was the last time you spun Making Things With Lights by The Mr. T Experience? You know, I pity the ensuing generation. The ones that were sold all that stale suburban chewing gum and told it was “pop punk.” It certainly wasn’t punk and it wasn’t even rock n roll. A lot of half-hearted foreplay to a fuck that never hits the spot. Now my teenage son gets form recruitment letters from Green Day College and North-Central Weezer University. It’s all junk mail. Those schools don’t even have baseball teams. Zero – that’s what it means.

So I try to get drunk on Old Style and only half succeed. The beer that made losing famous. Put to a reflective mood by a wade through tepid waters. The night drags on and I find myself once again at the altar of onanism. Playing my own band’s records. It’s always a bit like lifting the lid on something that might turn your stomach if you take too big a whiff. You can only do it once every couple of years. But then I guess one’s perspective changes over time. The palate matures. Semi-sober reflections on a life lived in dreams and…hey, this shit’s not half bad! Diving even deeper…wandering into secret rooms on YouTube where everyone abruptly stops talking the moment you arrive. Waking from a decades-long blackout to find you’ve been moonlighting as a musical genius. Sneaking into the graveyard at the edge of town…to bury the vocals.

I guess sometimes it just takes 20 years to realize you’ve been on the right track all along. I guess I did assert my presence on this earth after all, if only in a few small, neurotic circles. And anyway, winning isn’t everything. Just ask the racing sausages. Or hell, your favorite team could be the Supersonics! I look at it like this: nobody I know got soft cancelled today. No tweeted death threats or unsolicited dick pics. I didn’t even have to call the Cubs gay. Yeah, I gotta say it was a good day.